


of heartbreak and hindsight

by Bluebox_Parchment



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 12x23 coda, Angst, Canon Compliant, Coda, Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower, Forgive Me, M/M, Post-Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower, and i'm processing in the only way i know how, but that's just being overly dramatic, i am in emotional turmoil rn, i kinda wanna call this the death of dean winchester, this isn't the best thing i've ever written, which is by writing angsty whumpy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 01:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10956903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluebox_Parchment/pseuds/Bluebox_Parchment
Summary: heartbreakˈhɑːtbreɪk/nouncrushing grief, anguish, and overwhelming distress.hindsightˈhʌɪn(d)sʌɪt/noununderstanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed.





	of heartbreak and hindsight

In his head this is how it was supposed to go:

They're up against some big bad: God's second cousin or something, a faceless monster the week, or a dickbag angel. Whatever it is gets the better of him. He's not as quick as he used to be; age, combined with the sheer number of times he's died before makes his reactions a little more sluggish. There's a knife to his gut. Or claws that catch an artery. Breaking bones, or even a pair of fangs sinking into his neck. Whatever it is gets him and takes him down. It's nothing glamorous. His body hits the ground and his soul goes... wherever. The Empty, probably. He'll be swept off the board. Sam and Cas are left to fight the good fight. This time they won't lay siege to Hell or try and sell their souls, chug demon blood or waste away their Grace.

This time, they burn his bones with salt and gasoline.

In his head, he always goes first.

 

Instead, this is how it goes:

The tip of Lucifer's angel blade protrudes from Castiel's chest. The blue white light of angel grace flares up through his body and burns out through his eyes, and Dean  _ feels  _ it. His own heart seizes, falters, fails, in time with Cas' grace. It's like getting slammed with a truck. There's a voice in his head that says, you've been here before, and he can't tell if it means the dead angel at his feet, or the feeling of an angel blade piercing his heart. He's experienced both. The former has always felt worse.

He watches as their mom joins them, and he watches as she throws a punch at the devil's face, then another, and another, and another. He watches as she forces him through the literal tear in the fabric of the universe and watches as she's pulled in after him.

The tear seals up.

Metatron twisting the angel blade in his heart had felt kinder than this.

He's vaguely aware of the house behind them lighting up and dimly registers Sam heading back to the house to check out what the hell was happening with Lucifer's offspring. Dean knows he should follow. Something cosmic and world-changing has just happened.

His knees hit the floor. An hour ago, tops, Cas' grace had flared through him and healed his broken leg. The silence on this lakeside feels violent in ways he's never experienced before. There are two arching, ashy wings burnt into the dirt that Dean tries to ignore. But the sight of them draws his eyes like magnets, and carries his shaking fingertips towards them. His hands don't feel like they're a part of his body any longer. In fact, his whole body no longer feels like his own, and he watches the scene before him like a spectator, fingers now ghosting across the outlines of the splayed bones and tattered feathers.

The seconds fade on and his surroundings start to crank into hyper-focus. His ears are filled with the sound of his own ragged breathing. The once-gentle breeze now feels like a hurricane. Every line of horizon is sharp and jagged, every shadow elongated and twisting. Panic floods his system, clouds his eyes and fills his ears with white noise.

He can't breathe.

He can't breathe.

He can't.

He's crying before he can stop himself, before he can choke back the tears with several bottles of whiskey and a folded trench coat stuffed in the trunk. “You can't do this.” Somehow he's found his voice but it doesn't remotely sound like himself. His words are too thick, his voice rasping and broken.

“Come back,” he says, his fists twisting into Cas' coat sleeve. “Cas?” He hates how fragile he sounds. “Please? Cas? Please come back.”

Castiel remains unmoving, crumpled where he fell like a marionette whose strings were cut. “You don't get to do this.”

Once upon a time Cas'd shouted, 'I'll hold them off. I'll hold them all off', right before getting blasted apart by Raphael. A Molotov cocktail thrown towards Michael, 'You got your five minutes' he'd told Dean, then with a snap of Lucifer's fingers he was nothing but red mist splattered against Bobby. A panic-stricken cry of, 'Run!' before he became a Leviathan riddled meatsuit staggering into a ravine, melting into nothing but black blood. When he had been human and fragile, tortured and murdered right in front of him, there hadn't been words.

Already, Dean can’t remember the last thing he’d heard Cas say.

“Last time you thought you were dying,” he finds himself saying, “you told us that you loved us.” His eyes rove over Cas face. There’s no look of shock in his burned out eyes any longer. He looks so peaceful he could be sleeping.

But angels don’t sleep.

“That wasn’t quite right though. You said -” Dean’s voice falters slightly. “You’d said, ‘I love you’ and you’d said it to me.” Plucking his own heart from his chest wouldn’t feel this painful. He knows. He experienced that a few times in Hell. “And we never spoke about it. After the fact, we never brought it up.” He hangs his head. “We should’ve spoken about it.”

He allows his hands to move then, from their safe positions on Cas’ arm. One finds its way to Cas’ chest, splayed across his heart and the wound that had killed him. The other goes to Cas’ cheek. Places Dean had longed to touch but had never once found the courage to do.

“We should’ve -uh.” Dean coughs, shakes his head. “I should’ve-” He caresses his thumb across the swell of Cas’ cheek. “Never got to tell you.” He feels so defeated. A weak laugh escapes him, mingled in with his sobs. “I’ve been in love with you for so long. Had every opportunity to tell you and I can’t even say the words until you’re dead.” Another bitter laugh wrecks him.

He glances up at the star strewn sky. Heaven won’t care, and God’s not listening. The only person he’d ever had faith in is splayed in the dirt. “Come back,” he prays. “Come back to me.”


End file.
